First Day of School

I know this is late, but I had to post about Dean's first day of pre-school. He started school on his birthday which was a very exciting for him.

He got to bring cookies to share with the class. He also got to pick out a book as a birthday gift. He chose The Old Woman Who Swallowed Some Leaves. It a great Fall book, you should check it out. He is going on his first field trip today. They are going to a dentist office.

Things I love about Fall

photo source

I was talking to my neighbor the other day and we got on the subject of football. I told her that we are not into football at our house (we are not anti-football). She seemed surprised and asked "if your not into football then what are you into?" later in the conversation the subject of the Fall season came up. I said something about it being my favorite time of year. she again was surprised and asked why I would like fall if I don't like football? I really didn't have much to say due to my surprise that someone's life could rotate so much around a sport that they could not see what other things there are to enjoy. Here are my reasons I love Autumn:

1. cooler days
2. leaves changing
3. gardens being harvested
4. my birthday
5. making costumes
6. dressing up for Halloween
7. apple cider
8. caramel popcorn
9. everything pumpkin
10. warm soup
11. decorating my house
12. family togetherness
13. The Thanksgiving turkey run (5K)
14. Thanksgiving dinner
15. wrapping up in warm blankets
16. getting ready for Christmas
17. The giving spirit in the air
18. making gifts for others
19. canning (even if I don't do it, yet. It still reminds me of Fall)
20. wearing big sweatshirts

What are some of the things you love about fall?

Happy Fall Equinox! started today at 5:05 EDT

Superhero Birthday party!

My two boys birthdays are 3 days a part. last year Brig turned one and we tried doing two parties. This year we got smart and threw one big party for the both of them. Super hero themed.

Invites: 

the letter states:We here at the CRIME FIGHTING SUPER HERO LEAGUE have noticed you and your special skills. Skills that are necessary and vital to crime fighters. Do you think you have what it takes to be a Super Hero? Super Dean and his side kick Super Brig seem to think so. They have invited you to our SUPER SECRET SUPER HERO TRAINING FACILITY at (address). Training begins at 17:30 hours (5:30) on the tenth day of September 2011. Please come in your Super Hero uniform (if you don't have one, one will be provided for you) and be prepared to work hard. Becoming a super hero is not for everyone, but it could be for you. We hope you decide to become a part of the CRIME FIGHTING SUPER HERO LEAGUE.

Regards, Justice Forall

As guest arrive we had felt masks and plastic table clothes (cape) available.

We had a jar of Peanut M&M's for everyone to guess how many where in there.

We also had a photo booth area. There were props; dumbbell, wham, pow, bam signs, and the backdrop had a speech bubble that said Happy Birthday Super Dean and Super Brig .

 

We then had dinner and served Superhero sandwiches, sidekick sides, Hulk juice (green kool-aid and lemon-lime soda), and iceman water.

After dinner we had a trivia sheet for the adults, to test their superhero knowledge. And the kids went out to train to be a superhero. 

 

First: they must cross a lava pit (water and red kool-aid in a pool)

second: they must find the kryptonite from the bat cave. ( blankets over chairs to make a dark cave. We then put glow-sticks in there.)

third: they had to learn how to dispose of hazardous material. (using tongs they moved green painted rocks (kryptonite) to a cooler labeled hazardous material.

Fourth: vaporize a villain (we put villain faces on Helium filled balloons and gave the kids cans of silly string (spiderman webbing) to take down the villains. You could also use a person dressed like a villain.)

some ideas I did not get around to doing were: jumping over buildings (made of boxes, blocks, or legos) learn to fly. (Jump off stool into pile of pillows), getting yourself out of a sticky/stringy situation. (have yarn strung into a web. Have each child take an end and follow it to the other side. We were going to have the silly string on the other side.)

After training we went inside for cake and Ice cream. Most years I've had my sister make the cakes, sense she is a pro, but she move across the country this past year so I took what I learned from her and went for it myself, this year. In case you cannot tell what it is we have a city scape on the bottom with the bat-symbol in the sky. Then the top is a web for spider-man with a superman cape draped off the side. The two figures on top are hulk and ironman.

While everyone ate cake and ice-cream we read off the winner of the candy jar and the answers to the trivia questions. We then opened presesnts.

Labor Day in Ogden

For Labor day we went to Ogden and had fun at three places.

First we stopped at The Air Force Museum:

Second we went to the Union Pacific Train Museum:

Third we went to the Dinosaur Park:

35. Build a dog house and get a puppy.

As you know we got a puppy earlier this week. So yesterday we were going to build him a house. I had found a house plan online that was simple. the house was only for dogs up to 50 lbs. we had to enlarge it so it would fit our puppy when full grown. He is expected to get to 65-90 lbs according to what typical Labradors grow too, but his previous owner says they believe the mother may have some Great Dane in her.
After drawing out the plans we headed off to Home Depot (about 20min drive when there is no traffic) we got there and realized that we forgot the racks for the top of our car. A must for taking lumber home in our car (see picture below). We went back home and got them and ran into traffic on the way back to the store. When we finally got there, it took about an hour to find everything we needed. We started adding up the cost and realized it was going to cost us $200 or more to build this thing. we knew we had seen dog houses for cheaper so we stood there in the store looking up dog houses online on my Husbands phone. hehe! and sure enough there were plenty of dog houses online for way cheaper. We decided to ditch (okay we put most of it away) the stuff we had gathered and went to Pets-mart (another 10-15 min farther from our house) to see if they had anything in-stalk. Well they did. It was the same size that we were planning on building, but only cost $70. We figure even if we have to buy another one or two in his lifetime we still came out ahead.

We still had to assemble it so it still counts as building it, right?

our small car

Neville trying to help

 Neville got all tangled with his rope so we let him off the rope and he would keep stilling things from us, like the tools or the foot of the dog house.

chewing on the foot from the dog house

 This is the only time you will see my husband in the dog house. 

Right Honey?

Husband in the dog house!

 We will have to find a cover for the door to keep in the heat in the winter.

check out the size of the door.

 And Finished!